New Year: Reboot

For the last two and half year, I lived, breathed, and spent my waking hours thinking about Puppet. In a blink of an eye Puppet Labs is no longer the 12 person startup above Old Town Pizza shop1 or more infamously, above the start of the Shanghai Tunnel 2 in China Town.

The company can probably can start shedding the term startup, since it’s 10x the size, closed a third round investment, and finished their third office move to the Pearl district.

Looking back, I still pinch myself for even getting the opportunity to be in Portland since I started the job knowing little about the software. I’m still amused by the interview with the other candidate in the same room that felt like a reality TV show3. Fast forward 200,000 miles around the world later and I’m finally feeling comfortable using and talking about Puppet. It’s been an incredible ride, and more important I’ve been lucky to work with some of the brightest people I know. If you enjoy solving infrastructure problems, apply and have a blast.

It’s a New Year, and I’m sad it’s time for a reboot and I’ve left Puppet Labs to join VMware as a Sr. Systems Engineer under R&D. As usual a new shiny problem has presented itself and I’m diving head first into the unknown.

However I’m not saying goodbye to the Puppet community. A glimps of what’s to come should be announced at VMware Partners Exchange 2013. Here’s to 2013.